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5.16.2011

I subscribe to The Texas Prosecutor which is published "through legislative appropriation." The new issue hit my desk this morning and look what is on the cover: A self promoting article about The Denton No Body case written by the prosecutors. Did they start writing the article the second the trial was over?

From a quick glance at the article (and after getting past a subheading of "Dismantling The Defense" -- sheesh), I did learn the jury quickly sent out a note to the judge right after deliberations began asking for the definition of "reasonable doubt." Well, there's at least some proof they had no idea what that meant.

Edit: Someone asked how often a case gets reversed for insufficient evidence. The answer is "very, very rarely." Of all appealed cases, I bet there are no more than one or two a year reversed on that ground-- and that may be a high estimate. The standard is a tough one: Even with the appellate court assuming that every piece of evidence the State wanted the jury to believe to be true was in fact true, no rational jury could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It takes a mind-boggling weak case to meet that criteria.

I once knew a prosecutor in the early 1990s who was ecstatic when his case was reversed for insufficient evidence because he believed it to be the ultimate compliment: "I was able to convince a jury to convict with legally insufficient evidence!" (Paraphrased: "I was able to do the impossible!") I, on the other hand, considered it to be the ultimate slap in the face: If the case was so weak that no rational jury could convict, then every prosecutor should have recognized that to begin with.

Don't know much about the facts of the Denton murder case. Jury asking for the definition of "beyond a reasonable doubt." Not unheard of as there is no legal definition that the court gives the jury in the charge. Therefore the jury is left to decide on their own with what was given to them by the defense and prosecution attorneys during voir dire.

Why are you so hung up on the need to have evidence for a conviction? You're gonna give lawyers a good name - which in lawyer world, would be a bad thing

And the jury asking for the definition of "reasonable doubt" presumes they didn't know what it meant before that. But assuming the judge gave them the legal definition of that phrase, one presumes they knew exactly what it meant afterwards

The old joke about a defendant having a valid claim of "He just needed killin', your Honor" should probably have a corresponding claim for the prosecution: "He just needed convictin', your Honor."

9:56...Clearly you missed the point, corpus dilecti is not only applied in the literal sense, as BG suggests it should be--that would make life fairly easy on serial killers. If there is clear evidence of a crime the absence of a body obviously is not an exemption from prosecution. Whether this particular case was with merit can be argued but that is the reason for due process.

It is sad to see that you would not even hear evidence if you were on a jury and just simply say "no body, no murder"!

In this case;There was no body, it was not proven she was dead, and if she was dead it was not proven she was murdered. Seems like you would have to have reasonable doubt when it was not proven that someone was dead, much less murdered. I see the appeal being successful.

3:36...Yeah, she is alive, hanging with Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Bin Laden! What a joke, lady is dead, dude just did a good job of destroying evidence and hiding her body.

Why can't you people get past the fact that you do not need a body to prove death? It was proven she was dead since they convicted him...or maybe it was some conspiracy she cooked up to get back at him and she is really hiding in a million dollar compound in Abbott!

4:053:36 here.You don't have to have a body to convict but you have to have a body to prove death. If in this case there had been one shred of phycical evidence, traces of her blood, clothing, anything it would be different.She drove out to his house and they found her car there, that was it. One scenrio...she leaves, walks to the end of the driveway, gets in her boy friend's car and starts a new life somewhere else. She leaves her purse with her credit cards etc. and never uses anything that could trace to her. She has the satisfaction of knowing it looks like her husband kills her.Far fetched?? Without a body it could be possible.A jury said he killed her, that's not proof. You can't prove something is true by presenting the people who say it is.

5:43...The burden of proof is on the state not me! Sounds to me they satisfied the jury that she is dead so I think justice has been done. I like how you threw "shut it!" in there at the end, funny chit man!

There have been many cases where death was proven without a body, happens all the time. Corpus dilecti is not required if there is sufficient evidence to prove death. That evidence can be circumstantial as long as it leads to the only conclusion that the person is dead, which in this case is clear. If the woman had a history of dissapearing then that could be introduced as evidence 8:09. This was not her lifestyle so the only conclusion to her dissapearance is that she is dead.

9:43, even imagining that this extremely baffling line of reasoning is true, that suddenly disappearing without ever having done so before means it was against her will (and therefore, presumably she was murdered), why assume the husband was at fault? Because you have no other possible suspects? Perhaps a lack of suspects is indicative of a lack of evidence. The poor woman could have been kidnapped, or freaking abducted by aliens. There are plenty of possible scenarios that would explain her disappearance, but without any proof one way or another, why focus on the husband angle?

This is Texas and I am proud that our juries usually like to find them guilty and hang up high. In this case with no body and and no proof of death, I hope he wins his appeal!It is too bad Casey Anthony didn't have his jury. Don't know for sure if she killed Kaylee; but, she is certainly guilty of neglect, which may have caused her death. She should have lost her freedom to walk our streets and have another child. Bad seeds produce bad seeds.